Lamb and flagolet beans

Plagiarism is a great thing when it comes to food. Although now and then chefs come up with amazing discoveries of new flavour combinations or techniques (I wonder if there was ever a time when strawberries and cream or beef and mustard was ever considered new and daring?), I think generally food evolves by taking someone else's creation and tweaking it.

For this reason I find other peoples' recpies, especially handwritten ones fascinating. I love looking at other peoples' cookery books and gueassing what they have made from it (if they're messy) by which pages are most splattered, or by comments written in the margins. These can trigger such strong memories, for example when, after my grandmother died, my mum found a piece of paper with what she had cooked for her 21st birthday party tucked into a cookery book.

This recipe came from my housemate Agnes, who copied it from somewhere else. The fact that the sheet it's written on is reassuring crumpled from being used so often, and that I've tasted it before - and it was amazing, hearty and comforting - made me want to try the recipe myself.

2 large onions (the recipe I used called for shallots as well but I didn't have any)
12 cloves of garlic
A couple of finger length pieces of fresh rosemary, or a teaspoon dried
2 bay leaves
A small shoulder of lamb
6 tinned anchovy fillets
A tin of chopped tomatoes
2 glasses of wine, both red or white work well
A tin of flagolet, cannelini or butter beans

Slice the onions into 1cm wide strips and peel the garlic. Put the onions and ten of the garlic close into a roasting tray large enough to take the lamb later. Pull the rosemary leaves of the stems - I love doing this, and it makes your hands smell wonderful - and sprinkle them, along with the bay leaves over the onions. Add a bit of salt and a good grinding of pepper.

Cut the remaining garlic into little chards and roughly chop the anchovies. Using a small knife stab holes all over the lamb and poke a piece of garlic and some anchovy into each. Smear any remaining anchovies over the top of the lamb.

Put the anchovied lamb in the pan on top of the onions then pour the tinned tomatoes and wine around the meat. Cover with tin foil and roast at 180°C for four hours, by which time your kitchen shuld smell like a French farmhouse kitchen, the meat should be beginning to come away from the bone, and the tomatoes, wine and lamb fat should have amalgamated into pungent, slighly oily sauce. Remove the lamb, stir the beans into this, put the lamb back on top and roast for a further 30 minutes, this time without the foil, until the lamb is bronzed and screaming 'eat me' at you.

This should serve four, just, although the piece of lamb I used was really quite small. Despite the beans if I was serving this to other poeple I would probably make something potato-ey, maybe mash or sliced potatoes baked in stock, to go with it. As it was I ate it greedily on my own, for dinner one evening and lunch the next day and froze the rest for a clod evening when I suddenly need a lamb and bean hit.

Spinach and gorgonzola risotto

Risotto is one of the few foods that manages to be comforting, yet still feel like a proper meal. Rice pudding, bread in hot milk and mashed potatoes are all soothing but can sometimes feel a bit close to baby food.

It also works as a comfort food because it takes some time to prepare, although it isn't difficult, so you feel that you are looking after youself and can tell any concerned relatives that you are indeed 'eating properly'. Standing over a pan stirring can be strssful it you're doing it for a tableful of people but for one it is mindlessly soothing.

The strong flavours of spinach and gorgonzola counter balance the gentle blandness of the rice and I think the green and blue streaks look beautiful, even though they don't really show up in the photo very well.

Per person
A small onion
One large handful of Arborio or Carnaroli rice
Splash of vermouth, white wine or similar
125ml stock, preferably homemade but à la stock cub
e is fine
One hanful of baby spinach, chopped
50g gorgonzola

Fry a small onion or shallot until it's transluscent. Stir in the rice, coating it in the oniony oil then add the vermouth or white wine. Keep stirring until the liquid has mostly evapourated. Now start adding the stock a small ladleful at a time. It should be added hot, so either put it in pan and keep it over a low heat if you're using real stock, or crumble in a teeny lump of stock cube at the beginning and then add water from a recently boiled kettle.

Add liquid, stir, add more liquid and stir some more. The amount of liquid you end up using will dependon the heat of the pan and on the rice itself. This is not the thing to cook when you're liable to be distracted or not in the mood to spend twenty minutes by the stove. But after a long day some mindless chopping and stirring can be surprisingly relaxing - having to concentrate on something fairly untaxing gives you a break from thinking about other things.

When the rice has swollen and feels soft but with a bit of chalkiness towards the centre, add the chopped spinach. After a minute or two if should begin to wilt. Take the pan off the heat and throw in a small lump of butter and the gorgonzola.

Cover, and leave it while you quickly get together some salad and or pour yourself a drink. By now the cheese should be beginning to slowly ooze into the rice, but not yet fully melted. With the gorgonzola there's no need for parmesan but a meagre dusting of nutmeg or a bit of chopped parsley is a good idea.

Beef and Guinness pie

I find cooking for large numbers of people terrifying. Partly because I've haven't done if much, although when I lived in France I once managed to make dinner for twelve people in my tiny studio flat with two hot plates and a microwave: chicken from the rotisserie down the road, ratatouille in a borrowed saucepan, about 4,000 baguettes, and a lot of wine.

Generally I find feeding crowds intimidating, I can’t judge quantities in large amounts and live in fear there not being enough to go around. But having lots of people for dinner is fun so I’ve decided I must face my fear.

Last weekend a friend from Bristol came to stay, and a few other people were going to come round in the evening. A few somehow turned into many and I began to panic about how to feed them all. Seeing as most of them were hungry boys - one once made the New Year's resolution of 'only one meal at a time' - something substantial was in order.

The stew part of a beef pie can simmer all afternoon, making the kitchen smell like all kitchens should, or be cooked a couple of days in advance meaning that when you want to eat all you need to do is make the pastry, put in a pie dish, drape the pastry over and bake it.

Pie for ten:

For the filling

1kg stewing beef, preferably shin, in bite sized pieces

3 large onions

5 large carrots

Oil or beef dripping

1 tbs flour

A few sprigs of dried thyme and bay leaves

2 cans of Guinness

1tbs brown sugar

You can brown the meat for this but I didn’t brown the meat for this, mostly because I was feeling lazy, and decided that the Guinness and sugar would make up for any loss of caramelised meat favours.

Slice the onions and cook over a low heat for about 20-30 minutes until they’re a soft, pale brown mass. I used olive oil but beef dripping, if I’d had any, would have been even better. Add the carrots, cuts into slices, and cook for a further ten minutes.

Turn up the heat, add the beef and stir until it loses it loses its raw appearance. Add the flour and cook for a minute or two before adding the herbs, Guinness and sugar. Cover, turn the heat as low as it will go, and leave it to bubble very gently for at least two hours. Add some water if it starts to look too dry, but it shouldn’t be soupy either. This is the sort of thing that actually improves if you leave it for a day.

You could use any dark ale instead of Guinness, or any beer at all. One day I’m going to try making a Belgian inspired stew using a dark beer such as Chimay or Leffe Brun, a bit of sugar and the sweet gingerbread spices called pain d’epice.

For the pastry

100g butter cut into cubes

200g plan flour

Pinch of salt

As per normal shortcrust, rub the butter into the flour and salt until it looks a bit like porridge oats. Stir in very cold water with a knife (I’m not sure why I always make pastry with a knife but it just feels right) until begins to come together into a lump, but isn’t too sticky. Beware that sometimes the flour mixture looks really dry but if you carry on stirring it then suddenly it starts to cohere into a ball.

Quickly knead the pastry into a ball and chill it in the fridge for half and hour or so. Decant the stew mixture into a large dish then roll out the pastry to the thickness of a pound coin and place over the dish. Press the pastry into the rim with your fingers to make a scalloped pattern then trim away the excess.

If the filling was hot when you put it in the dish then you just need to cook the pastry – about 20 minutes at 200°C – but if it starts off cold then cook it at 150°C for 45 minutes, covering the top with foil if the pastry begins to look too dark. Best eaten with lots of buttery mashed potato, and some cabbage if you feel the need for something green.

Braised pork belly

I have always thought of pork belly as something that should be cooked in huge vats to be served up to tables full of rosy-cheeked children. Unfortunately (thankfully, come to think of it) I don't have any of those so I just bought to two little slabs you see above.

The few times I've pork belly I've done it with garlic, fennel seeds and chilli, which is good with all things porky, and I think would be great minced pork in meatballs. However, today I wanted to try something more Asian, inspired by Chez Pim's five spice braised pork and Eat Like A Girl's spiced roast pork.

So, peppercorns, dried chillies, fennel, a little piece of star anise and cinnamon were pounded in the pestle and mortar (the biggest, toughest-looking, best pestle and mortar, incidentally) and then smeared over the two pieces of belly. Ideally I would have left it to marinate for a a few hours but I didn't have time and it didn't seem any the worse for it.

I briefly seared the meat on both sides, then added about three tablespoons of fish sauce, two of brown sugar and enough water to just cover. Turn the heat down as low as possible and leave to simmer very gently for at least two hours. The water will evaporate a bit; this is part of the plan.

After about two and a half hours my house smelt amazing - sweet, salty and pungent - and the meat was beginning to fall apart. The liquid had reduced down to a few very intense spoonfuls made unctuous by rendered-down fat. I ate it with rice, lubricated with these juices, and with steamed spinach to cut through the richness. Any leftovers are amazing for breakfast, reheated and shredded, then piled on to toast which you have dunked in the fat.

Coffee pot - my new favourite toy

A friend recently went on holiday to Lisbon and very sweetly brought me back this amazing coffee-making device. It is a moka pot but instead of collecting the coffee in the top half of the pot in this little baby it flows up through the central stem and is neatly decanted straight into two coffee cups.

Besides looking very cute, I've discovered its much harder to spoil coffee in it. If you leave a moka pot on the heat for too long it eventually boils, and boiled coffee is nothing more than a nasty bitter brown liquid that will ruin your breakfast and leave you in a bad mood all morning.

When I lived in France I would often put the coffee on the hob then rush down to the bakery for some bread. Normally I would arrive home just in time to hear it bubble through into the top container but if there was a queue at the baker's I would return to the smell of burnt coffee and sometimes splashes of coffee over the wall behind the hob.

However, with this new version the coffee is protected from the heat by both the china of the cup and the little metal shelf it stands on which is not directly above the boiling water. Genius.

Hangover cure

Wake up, and then wish you hadn't. Resolve never to drink to excess again. Try to block out the sunlight and go back to sleep. Wake up a few hours later, go downstairs and attempt to talk to housemates. Fail, and retreat back to bed. Try to remember why a second bottle of wine seemed like a good idea last night. Drink a cup of tea brought to you by your lovely housemate. Eventually feel human enough to go downstairs again in search of sustenance.

Drag a pot out of the cupboard, noticing that it seems heaver than normal, and put it on the hob. Slice a pepper carefully, being aware your physical coordination is not what it usually is. Fry it in oil with a sprinkling of chilli flakes for a few minutes. Add a couple of handfuls of red lentils and enough water to cover them by about 5cms. Retire to moan quietly on the sofa while they cook for 15 minutes or so, adding more water if it dries up. When the lentils are soft and the whole mixture looks thick and soupy it's ready. Add some salt if you want.

Eat from a bowl on your lap. This is not a time for tables and chairs. Feel much better, so go back for seconds.

Oops, or the tarte au citron that wasn't

Today I had intended to post a picture of a cute little individual tarte au citron with cream and raspberries on the side. Unfortunately when I took them out of the oven, a bit later than I meant to having been distracted by the fantastic thai salad my lovely housemate had made, I ldiscovered that if you cook lemon cream for too long if turns into something that resembles a cross between scrambled eggs and little souffles in pastry.

Once they'd been out of the oven for a bit they did deflate somewhat and, while not as smooth as I would have liked it the texture looked at least edible. It was just as I was about to take a bite that I realised they would not be edible: I had forgotten to add the sugar to the lemon-egg-cream mixture. Oops.

I hope that those of you who are less forgetful are more successful with this recipe (which is adapted from the Lemon Cream in Nigella Lawson's 'How To Eat').

For the pastry I used the same method as for Green Pie and used it to line four holes in a cupcake tin, then baked them blind for about 10 minutes.

Combine the zest and juice of one lemon, 100ml of double cream, one egg and 75g of sugar (N.B This is not optional) and if you have time leave it to stand in the fridge for an hour or so, or even overnight if you have time. This could be a good pudding to make if you have people coming round for dinner - make the pastry cases and the mixture the day before and then you only have to assemble and bake it on the day. Or make the whole thing the day beforehand, it keeps for a few days and I prefer it cold to hot.

Fill the pastry cases three-quarters full and put into an oven preheated to 150 degree for about 15 minutes - check them regularly to avoid making lemon-scented scrambled eggs.